Burnt By the Sun
Solaris
7even
Memento
Stalker
Witness for the Prosecution. Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Joseph Cotten, and Elsa Lanchester. Great cast, great acting. Almost a proto-Rumpole. I found the twist interesting, but not great. But I loved the film – more than I usually like Agatha Christie.
Chinatown has a great ending to it.
Hell, most of Jack’s movies have more than a few twists and turns in them.
dead again.
I recommend a little-known, cheesy 1972 movie with wide lapels, long leather jackets, paisley, blow-dryed hair and one heck of a good twist for its day and time.
“The Groundstar Conspiracy,” starring George Peppard, Michael Sarrazin and Christine Belford (she was so great in “Banacek,” also with Peppard–does anybody else remember being a lad in the 70s and just adoring and wanting her!?), based on the novel “The Alien” by L. P. Davies.
A computer tape (an honest-to-goodness old-fasioned spooled computer tape) with secrets to some-such project are stolen from the Groundstar facility, but the man who infiltrated and stole the tapes is hideously malformed (requiring facial plastic surgery) in the resultant destruction of the facility and can’t remember who he is. Peppard is the government official who sets out to “help” him get his memory back so that he can discover who hired him.
The ending is quite a kicker.
The movie is not great in-and-of-itself, but the ending is quite memorable. For that I recommend it. It’s at most Wal-mart-type places for $4.99. Good bargain for that price, plus the aforementioned Christine Belford.
Sir Rhosis
I don’t remember anything about a lack of a moon - if this is true, how was it explained?
I know a lot of movies hope the audience will overlook the fact that the aliens speak English, but in PotA the fact the apes speak English is commented on. I guess it might not be obvious to someone unfamiliar with SF but if you had told someone who was but had never heard of Planet of the Apes about a story where a space traveller comes to a planet where humans are non-speaking savages and ruled by Chimps, Orangutangs, and Gorillas who ride on horseback and speak English, he would immediately think either ‘It’s Earth’ or ‘It was a planet colonized by humans and apes’.
POTA, both versions, really do point up the plot device of the “non-thinking” hero. Had George Taylor or Leo Davidson sat down and given more than two minutes of thought to the matter, both would have realized wherethey were/what had happened.
FWIW, in Rod Serling’s overlong, fairly boring first (of several) drafts of POTA (68 versio), the Taylor character (Thomas here) even comments on star positions, declaring that there’s something up with the star positions that he just can’t put his finger on, that somehow if they were just a little more this way or that way, one would think he was on… nah, couldn’t be. DUH, George!
Sir Rhosis
Sir Rhosis (Great Name)
I don’t think this is fair
If they realized they were in a movie they could have figured out what was going on. But Heston had no idea his ship had looped around back to Earth and so had no reason to think he had returned.
And after a few thousand years the stars would change positions (as they are still moving) so it is likely they might be different enough for Thomas/Taylor to miss that.
As far as the latest Leon was far too concerned about escaping from the planet to actually think that his friend the chimp was going to show up (I’m sure the audience was waiting). And the very ending made no sense whatso ever as the Planet in this movie was not earth (Three Moons)
Badtz Maru-
They never explained the moon but it is likely they happened to crash during a new moon when it was not visible.
The only comments that are made about the language in the first movie is just that the apes are speaking. In the Third movie they make a deal about the fact it was English, but by then we already know.
Either way I think the original audience who isn’t as jaded and used to surprise endings would have just accepted the situation that this was a planet where apes evolved from Humans.
Maybe if we can find people who saw the movie in its initial run they could verify whether they saw it coming or not?